GRANT NEWSHAM: in the broader context of this U.S. China relationship where China will tell you they are at war with us. If you listen to Xi Jinping, he's very clear about it that only one of these systems is going to survive.

Grant Newsham @ Center for Security Policy.  

00:11.  Despite aggressive threats from China, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. will keep doing what it's been doing when it comes to Taiwan.  How significant is that?

00:23.  Well, I think it's a good thing.  I think Secretary Rubio spoke very well.  Before the meetings, of course, there were all sorts of people who were saying that President Trump is going to sell out Taiwan, that he's going to give Xi Jinping what he wants and to back off.  But Secretary Rubio is very clear about it that we hear the Chinese, we've heard them before; they say the same thing.  But our policy hasn't changed, and if there is to be any change to the status quo across the Taiwan Street it has to be done peacefully and voluntarily without coercion.  So that hopefully will put these doubters at rest for at least 30 minutes or so.

1:07.  Colonel president Trump says China has agreed to buy more American soybeans, jet planes, and energy, but given the CCP's record of not really honoring it's pledges even as recently, you remember, as the last Trump Administration, how do you see these deals or proposed deals?

1:23.  Well it's hard to get too excited about them if you've followed these Summits for 30-35 years.  You have these kind of promises, and yes China does buy some of these things, aircraft, at least until they can build their own, and then they won't need Boeing jets and same with soybeans, for example. It's hard to get too excited. They grudgingly buy some, and then they say, "Oh, we did you a favor," but in actual fact they take the soybeans, turn those into value-added products, anything from inkjet printers, the ink at least, cosmetics, etc., and then they sell it back to the US, to the West, and make about four or five times profit.  So these are just relatively minor tactical exchanges as I see it and take place in the broader context of this U.S. China relationship where China will tell you they are at war with us.  If you listen to Xi Jinping, he's very clear about it that only one of these systems is going to survive.  So, yes, it's nice, of course, for farmers, nice for Boeing, but it's really just a temporary measure and doesn't affect the underlying problem in our relationship with what is a fundamentally a hostile nation, and it is entirely because Beijing wants it to be a hostile relationship.

2:42.  So you mentioned war, hostile relationship, anything coming out of this summit that you're kind of looking into to see where this relationship or adversarial relationship is going?

2:55.  I think we shouldn't expect too much from this.

I think there was maybe some hope that the Chinese might talk to the Iranians, tell the Iranians to back down and cooperate with the Americans but that doesn't seem likely to come out.  Another concern was that the Americans might relax their technology controls on exports to China. It's not clear what will come out of that.  Xi Jinping certainly wants more access to the US market, say, for EVs, their EV batteries, etc., partly so they can really put American competitors out of business and get a foothold in the US, and it doesn't look like the Americans have given him what he wants on that.  When it comes to Taiwan, of course, Secretary Rubio has spoken up on that one. Fentanyl, well, that's really the biggest issue, and it appears that it was covered but it doesn't appear that it was really pressed.  And Fentanyl has killed over 800,000 Americans since about 2013 it comes from China.  China could stop it in an afternoon.  But you can see how even Mr. Trump he sort of glides over it; he doesn't make as much out of this as he should or any previous president should have.  So the relationship really hasn't changed.  I think you would say at best that it hasn't gotten worse as a result of this visit.  

4:22.  Colonel, you brought up Iran with the White House saying after the meeting that the US and China have reached some agreements over Iran, but can the US really trust the CCP to help there?  There's plenty of evidence that shows that China was actually helping Iran fight the US and evaded sanctions.

4:38.  Well, I don't know why you would trust China over this.  I think we have the intelligence that China's providing targeting information to the Iranian so they can strike targets in the Gulf, including us and potentially kill Americans.  And they're providing what amounts to rocket fuel for Chinese ballistic missiles. They've got a resupply effort going across the border from Pakistan to keep the Iranians in operation.  So they're not going to do anything that we think they should.  You heard Secretary Rubio explain how it was in China's interest to have the Straits of Hormuz open, to have the war stopped.  Well, we think it is, but China doesn't.  In many respects, they're glad to have America bogged down for now in the Persian Gulf.  It causes political problems for president Trump.  And also it allows them to maintain this hold that they have over Iran which is their main proxy in the Middle East and that they've used for decades to exert their influence to destabilize and really subvert the region.  So that the Chinese don't have much interest in helping us out here even though it was announced that both sides agreed the Straits of Hormuz should be open and that Iran should not have nuclear weapons.  That's really not a promise from the Chinese side that one should take too seriously.

6:03.  To your point, if you look historically at the Chinese Communist Party just uses any opportunity to benefit from any kind of destabilization.  So to your point on the Strait of Hormuz, it's valid.  Finally Colonel, today while President Trump was in China we saw the Congressional Executive Commission on China holding a hearing on illegal organ trafficking in China.  It's how the CCP harvests organs from living religious practitioners for profit.  It's just incredible.  Does the US have a responsibility to raise this type of issue or other human rights issues with the CCP at these types of summits?

6:40.  Well, it should.  We are the United States.  We supposedly care about these things.  And how do you sit across the table from someone who, as you said, literally takes the organs out of live prisoners.  And these are prisoners of conscience but even any sort of prisoner that actually does that has a handsome business going on selling these things, and how do you sit across from them and think that you're actually going to establish some sort of a working relationship with them?  It takes some real delusion to do that and human rights is something that should be raised constantly with the Chinese.  Xi Jinping has actually said in his Document 9 in 2013 that human rights really are an enemy.  It's something that doesn't apply to China, and he hates it when that is raised.  But these are things that you have to talk about it.  As I say, this organ harvesting . . . this just hideous racket that the Chinese Communists have going.  The fentanyl that's killed so many of us.  These are things that need to be talked about.  You can't think that, well, if we just do business with them, they're going to gradually become like a lovable Canada, like at least when Canada was more lovable.  But it just hasn't happened.  You know, we have 30, 40 years of empirical evidence to look at and China is not going to change barring some unforeseen events.  And we really shouldn't be supporting it or tolerating it because we are once again the United States of America, and that's probably worth more than some soybeans and Boeing 737 exports.  

PETER CLACK: Globalism meant Western factories closed, borders opened, and jobs relocated to wherever it was cheaper and convenient. The industrial worker in Vienna, the Ruhr region, or Ohio became unemployed or was pushed into low-wage service sector work.

The West gave China everything, including its 2001 admission to the WTO, even though China lacked a true market economy or rule-of-law system. It was a voluntary technology transfer: anyone who wanted to produce in China was forced to hand over their intellectual property.

The West dismantled its own industrial base and rebuilt it in China. The West financed a totalitarian surveillance state that now uses Western money to rearm, buy up strategic ports, monopolise raw materials, and exercise leverage over us. --Peter Clack

Globalism was sold with a promise of prosperity. In reality, it was the greatest redistribution of wealth in human history.

Globalism meant Western factories closed, borders opened, and jobs relocated to wherever it was cheaper and convenient. The industrial worker in Vienna,… pic.twitter.com/3qMxQOhdMp

— Peter Clack (@PeterDClack) September 20, 2026

Globalism was sold with a promise of prosperity. In reality, it was the greatest redistribution of wealth in human history. Globalism meant Western factories closed, borders opened, and jobs relocated to wherever it was cheaper and convenient. The industrial worker in Vienna, the Ruhr region, or Ohio became unemployed or was pushed into low-wage service sector work. At the same time, profits ballooned for the middlemen who produce nothing. Financial conglomerates, importers, logistics giants, tech platforms, and consultants have pocketed the margin between cheap production in Asia and expensive sales in the West. The result is a super-rich global elite and a left-behind, indebted proletariat. The middle class—the backbone of every free society—was crushed. This represents the greatest surge in inequality in a century. Without globalism, China would never have risen. The West gave China everything, including its 2001 admission to the WTO, even though China lacked a true market economy or rule-of-law system. It was a voluntary technology transfer: anyone who wanted to produce in China was forced to hand over their intellectual property. The West looked the other way on forced labor, state subsidies, currency manipulation, and technology theft. Capital on a scale of trillions of dollars has been pumped directly into China. The West dismantled its own industrial base and rebuilt it in China. The West financed a totalitarian surveillance state that now uses Western money to rearm, buy up strategic ports, monopolise raw materials, and exercise leverage over us. China did not rise despite the West, but because the globalist West built it that way. Short-term profit was prioritised over national security, industrial sovereignty, and local workforce stability. A rootless, stateless elite in New York, Brussels, Berlin, and Shanghai feels at home everywhere and takes responsibility nowhere. In its wake are stranded communities, stripped of industry and upward mobility, entirely dependent on supply chains controlled by a foreign power.

This was no mistake. It is how the system was designed to work. 

J. MICHAEL WALLER: As much as 90% of Iran’s oil experts went to 🇨🇳. The ChiComs bought the sanctioned oil at a steep discount. Loss of that discounted oil, on top of the loss of Venezuela’s discounted oil, will place massive internal pressures on the Chinese Communist Party.

As much as 90% of Iran’s oil experts went to 🇨🇳. The ChiComs bought the sanctioned oil at a steep discount.

Loss of that discounted oil, on top of the loss of Venezuela’s discounted oil, will place massive internal pressures on the Chinese Communist Party. https://t.co/LIdOBls0RC

— J Michael Waller (@JMichaelWaller) February 28, 2026

Peter St Onge writes, 

Apparently China buys "over 90%" of Iran's oil exports. China was buying nearly 70% of Venezuela's.

Neither were being paid in dollars.

This is the real power play by Trump and Rubio.

They are cutting off China’s cheap oil supply.

1) Venezuela 800,000 bpd that was going to China, now goes to Texas refineries.

2) Iran 1.2 million bpd was going to China at a big discount. That is finished.

— Wall Street Mav (@WallStreetMav) February 28, 2026

MARTIN ARMSTRONG: China is not going to let Iran fall. It takes most of Iran’s oil at a discount and has locked in a strategic rail and trade corridor to the Middle East. Iran is now a critical national security issue for China.

China is not going to let Iran fall. It takes most of Iran’s oil at a discount and has locked in a strategic rail and trade corridor to the Middle East. Iran is now a critical national security issue for China. pic.twitter.com/ohp3wybzdf

— Martin A. Armstrong (@ArmstrongEcon) February 28, 2026

MARTIN ARMSTRONG: Where the USA accounts for 17.5% of global manufacture, China stands at 27%.

like the US won WWII, we became . . . the manufacturing based to outproduce Germany.  That is what I meant that the shoe is on the other foot.  --Martin Armstrong

PIERRE ASKS: Marty, when I asked you why we would lose in WWIII, you said the shoe is on the other foot this time. You said that you would do a report on that. Is there any update you can give because these people here in charge are in agreement that war is coming. I flew to Philadelphia in 2011 to see you at that WEC. You laid out the war cycle would turn up in 2014 long before anyone even thought of war. There are many people copying you now pretending it is their research who do not have the contacts behind their charts. I should point out, that they put you on French TV not in America. Your own country will not put you on TV because they are beholding to the Neocons. When the Trump Administration came to write a peace plan, they came to you, not these charlatans. It does seem they are working in some conspiracy for war.

MARTIN ARMSTRONG: Yes, I am working on the 2026 War Report and a number of projects including the long awaited ECM book. China is currently the leading manufacturing country, surpassing the United States in production output. As of 2023, China’s manufacturing value-added reached $4.66 trillion, which is more than the combined output of the next three largest manufacturing economies: the United States, Japan, and Germany. Where the USA accounts for 17.5% of global manufacture, China stands at 27%.

In the war simulations that I ran, China will defeat the United States because in an initial confrontation, we can wipe out at least 1/3 of their Navy as they do to ours. However, like the US won WWII, we became . . . the manufacturing based to outproduce Germany.  That is what I meant that the shoe is on the other foot.

The European Union is collapsing. This is why they are up-in-arms about Visa & Mastercard, for they need to control the economy and they are behind closed doors trying to get the UK to rejoin to prop up a failing economic experiment. But they do not care about Europe, or the people. This is only about retaining their power. This is no different from NATO.  It needs war with Russia just to remain relevant or the money stops and they too lose their jobs.

The European Union is collapsing. This is why they are up-in-arms about Visa & Mastercard for they need to control the economy and they are behind closed doors trying to get the UK to rejoin to prop up a failing economic experiment. https://t.co/ypP27LNNdV

— Martin A. Armstrong (@ArmstrongEcon) February 13, 2026

Here is a yearly chart of the Russian ruble. Despite all the press "how Russia is weak," "it is collapsing," etc., sorry, the ruble is rising, not declining. China will come to the aid of Russia because they know they will be next. With a manufacturing base of this vast potential, the shoe is on the other foot this time. But this is about bureaucrats simply trying to hold on to their power. They do not care about you.  

from Statista.  All American Made.

Whole Foods Using Fake Organic Foods from China?

I sold to Whole Foods 20 years ago and caught them charging triple for my fruit and labeling it organic while they knew that I was a conventional grower. I cut them off immediately.
Unfortunately, this just doesn’t happen from China. It happens all the time
I’ve caught and…

— Christine Davis (@DavisPeachFarm) March 6, 2025

🚨BREAKING: Panama's President has ended the country's Panama Canal deal with China, immediately following a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio

President Trump on the Panama Canal: “They’ve violated the agreement — and we’re going to take it back or something very powerful is going to happen.” pic.twitter.com/saSGLrEus5

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 3, 2025

BREAKING: Marco Rubio has presented an ultimatum to the President of Panama regarding the Panama canal, per Axios: "Absent immediate changes regarding Chinese influence, the US will take measures necessary to protect its rights under the Treaty"

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) February 2, 2025

HOLY!!! This is incredibly good news for American safety and global security! Yes!!! Go suck it CCP! https://t.co/cE82gsekCh

— Dani Ahn Direct (@DaniAhnDirect) February 3, 2025

“We borrow $6 billion a day from China and send it to Ukraine”

“We borrow $6 billion a day from China and send it to Ukraine”
Talk about classic money laundering. Ukraine gets tons of money and China owns us more every day. pic.twitter.com/oDoxaAUMgA

— DrHankMD (@DrSHankMD) August 15, 2023

Russia's population is half that of the United States

If India or China lost 1,000,000,000 people each—they would still be more populous than the US.

So why do Americans think they’re so special? https://t.co/uCE4xTgt1U

— Gonzalo Lira (@GonzaloLira1968) April 22, 2023

"The carrot that Schwab is handing out [to the different governors, prime ministers, and leaders] is the end to democracy. So they no longer have to be accountable to anybody . . . "

Thanks to Martin Armstrong.

4:00  COVID crisis really began with the Repo Crisis which began in 2019.  US banks were suddenly not willing to lend to anybody in Europe, so the Federal Reserve had to step in.  And just recently, I spoke to the top 3 major U.S. banks in New York, and they will not accept any European bond whatsoever for collateral.  It's interesting to see the capital flows, and there are people who do know what's going to happen in advance and they begin to move their money; that's what our computer picks up.

5:12  He was put into prison under civil contempt, which you're not entitled to a trial.  The statute says 18 months; they kept me for 7 years.  I was finally released only after my case got to the Supreme Court.  The Supreme Court ordered them to explain why I was in prison, and then they finally had to release me and said the case was moot.  That's basically the way it goes.  HSBC paid a criminal restitution of $606 million dollars.

8:30  The crisis really began when the ECB put the interest rates into negative territory; they did that in 2014.  He warned them.  Do not do this.  You're not going to get out of it.  They basically didn't listen.  I think I'm at least partly responsible for why the Federal Reserve did not go that far.  Once they went negative, nobody was going to buy their bonds.  They were forced by law to buy the pension funds, and now all of the pension funds in Europe are insoluble.  Now they have a major financial crisis.  

9:30  Governments want to default on their debt.  They can't do that because all the pension funds will be wiped out.  Depending on the country, anywhere between 70% and 100% has to be invested in government bonds.  So if you have governments default, you're going to have pension funds wiped out, then you're going to have millions of people storming their palaces with pitchforks.  You'll no longer have mortgages, student loans, car loans, etc.  

10:35  The problem that he has is that he is a die-hard Marxist for years.  The idea of Marxism worked with the Russian Revolution only because serfdom continues in Russia and it wasn't abolished until 1861, whereas serfdom ended in the 15th century in Europe.  When that ended, the people didn't own anything.  All the property, all the wealth was in the hands of the aristocrats absolutely.  They had nothing.  So Marx's idea that let's have a revolution, go get their stuff, at least made sense, in the sense that these people didn't own anything at all to begin with.  But trying to do that today is quite different: people own their own houses, their cars, they have a career, we're not starting from absolute zero, which is what made Marxism work to some degree, you know, to at least get it off the ground.  But Schwab still talks of equality and things of this nature, but that's really kind of nuts because that very idea is what brought communism down.  

12:12  How is he being so successful in convincing so many people that this is such a great idea?  Why does he have this power?  

12:21  He is a very strategic, very cunning type person.  [Aren't there other leaders with these qualities who are pro-freedom, pro-capitalism?]  He's not a frontman as some of these people think that he's just a frontman for Soros or DAVOS.  No, he has been the brainchild behind a lot of this and they have been attracted to him.  [Recall that Schwab was an acolyte of Kissinger.]  He knows how to manipulate things.  He's created this program Young Leaders for Tomorrow.  He's taking people and basically indoctrinating them to his philosophies and then puts them in various offices.  The head of the EU was on his board.  The head of the IMF was on his board.  The head of the ECB is on his board.  Tedros from the WHO, he put him in there.  The head of the United Nations was associated with the World Economic Forum.  He knows exactly what he's doing.  He's buying his way through government.  So it's more or less indoctrinating them, and the politicians really did get scared when Trump was elected.  In Washington, DC, they thought it was a fluke.  No, they voted against you.  You don't understand that.  He beat 17 career politicians.  It's not that he was the greatest white knight coming to save the world or something.  It was that the voters didn't like them [i.e., the politicians] and they didn't want to hear that.  So they would rather say it was a fluke.  And the AFT, that did a piece in 2016 when Trump was elected, and suddenly that's when democracy became populism.  Populism was bad; they just switched the words.  The main reason they were so against Trump was because they were afraid that would happen to them, that the career politicians would be simply voted out.  If you look at Schwab's 8 Points, besides his "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy about it," he says that the U.S. will no longer be a superpower; that will be shared by the United Nations.  He has a whole bunch of things in there, in the 8 Points, that are very critical.  And one of them is that democracy will no longer exist.  They view that the people voted for Trump and are just too stupid and that we know better.    

15:30  They view that the people voted for Trump and that they [Klaus Schwab and the DAVOS crowd] know better.  If you look at the structure of Europe, the European Union, he had a hand in that.  Yes, you still have a right to vote for an MP, but an MP has no right to make a law or veto a law.  The laws are written by the European Commission which never stands for an election.  The head of the EU is appointed.  She never stands for election.  So it's completely a facade that democracy even exists.  It does not exist in Europe at all.  The people have no right to say we don't like the way this is going, we're going to overthrow the government, we're going to vote them out.  You can't vote them out.  

16:20  Well, it seems that democracy has disappeared globally.  We've been screaming from the rooftop that we don't want mandatory vaccines, we don't want . . . everything that's going on.  We've got a dictator in Victoria now that can declare there's a pandemic even if there isn't one present.  We've seen a destruction of democracy around the world.  I wonder, Martin,  

16:40  Are you aware of any of Australia's leaders, or Scott Morrison, or DAVOS clique, as Reiner Fuellmich called it?  The carrot that Schwab is handing out [to the different governors, prime ministers, and leaders] is the end to democracy.  So they think they no longer have to be accountable to anybody, so they think they're going to be able to pull this off.  The whole COVID nonsense is about control.  I can tell you absolutely that Schwab told people that the virus was coming.  I heard rumors of that as early as September 2019.  I believe not only was it deliberately created in a lab but that it was deliberately planted in China in an effort to blackmail China into joining the Great Reset.  They had to get rid of Trump to do it, and they had to get both Putin and China under their wings as well.  Marxism would have worked had they had Europe and the United States at the same time.  But it's just nonsense.  I was actually called in by China to help them become capitalists.  I flew over there and it was interesting to watch.  The Chinese were substantially different than the Russians.  The Russians basically went from communism to an oligarchy.  In China, I was impressed that they were not interfering; they were letting everything go and they were tracking it.  They were tracking 249 varieties of tea in China.  I had no clue there were that many.  They wanted me to answer why this one tea was selling for $1 here but $5 someplace else.  I asked, "Where does it come from?"  And they said here.  And I said, "Well, first you have transportation costs.  Secondly, it must be a good tea, since some people are willing to pay more than something else."  They didn't understand these things.  (I wonder what year he is talking about.)

17:00  Obedience to Authority, Stanley Milgram, 1974. Came out of the Nazis during WWII, with the "just following orders" ethic.  He discovered that if the government tells them to do something, they'll do it.  This is why you see people driving around in their car by themselves with a mask.   

Civil unrest will accelerate the crash?  Yes.  Google the papers from Amazon on how to prevent a union from forming, based on a study that created a diversity index.  The more diverse a company is, the less likely they are to form a union. From that concept, can you extrapolate what it must be like trying to form a sovereign nation with the breadth and variety of immigration into the United States?